TIll NATIONAL, GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
Photograph from IIerford Tynes Cowling
OLIVE TREES MORE THAN 1,000 YEARS OLD: MAJORCA
popular in M\ajorca, where they tell of
his first trip to the islands when a young
man. He was walking along the road
when one of the peasants, now an old man
in Deya, had an accident with his loaded
mulecart. The peasant called to the
stranger and in none too careful language
directed the Archduke's movements in
aiding to repair the breakdown.
When the task was finished the oblig
ing stranger was generously tendered ten
centimos (two cents), with the sugges
tion that he go get a drink. The Arch
duke thanked the peasant courteously,
saying he would keep the coin as a me
mento, since it was the first money he
had ever earned. The village still tells
the joke and the peasant even now is
made to feel embarrassed.
A SMUGGLERS' RENDZVOUS
The supplying of the submarines was
handled, so my neighbors told me, by a
small society of men in S6ller (see page
424), about four miles northeast of Deya.
All the natural facilities aided them. For
miles the coast is rocky, wild, and filled
with caves-exactly the kind of caves for
storybook smugglers.
The real smuggler still exists, though
each night the carabineros, looking more
like comic-opera figures than real-life
guardians of the law, start for their all
night vigils along the coast. They are paid
scandalously low wages, however, and
the philosophical Majorcans shrug their
shoulders and say, "What can you expect
if they happen to fall asleep at convenient
times and places, when the smuggler is
free with gifts of money to his friends ?"
Past our house goes a little donkey path
to a cove on the sea, and sometimes in the
dead of the night one can hear the tramp
tramp of many shod feet as they pass.
Your neighbor will calmly tell you next
morning that the contrabandistas were
there in the night. On one occasion they
probably needed rope, for they stole our
donkey's reins; but, as some small, useful
bit of cord is usually the extent of their
iniquity, no one bothers them and they
bother no one.
I have always longed to see them, for
the winding path among the trees, with
the background of wild, rugged moun
tains, is a setting for the smugglers, with
their laden donkeys, upon which it would
be hard to improve. But the nights are
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